Myongdong

For a while, I didn't particularly care for Korean cuisine. I thought it had a hot, but not particularly flavorful taste. Or I had a bowl of dumplings that were a little greasy, but nothing particularly special.

After a while, though, I began to warm up to Korean food. Each Asian cuisine has its own taste. Chinese is the best known and ranges from flavorful spicy to non-spicy. Japanese is blander, but focuses more on visual appearance and texture, thus sushi. They have some lightly fried stuff like tempura. There is an emphasis on seafood. Thai cuisine can be fairly spicy, and is something of a cross between Indian and Chinese, as is Burmese cooking.

Korean cooking is spicier than most Asian cuisine, probably somewhere in the league of Thai cooking. What I love about Korean cooking is not bulgogi, the marinated beef--Koreans prefer beef over all other meats, but Korean stews, and right now, above all, I like sundubu jigae.

This dish looks fiery red, mostly, I'm sure due to gochujang, the equivalent of Japanese miso (fermented soy beans) hopped up on chilies. Despite its intense red color, the taste is more bark, than bite. While it is spicy, it's not painfully spicy. Hot enough to make you sweat some, but still tasty enough that it isn't an exercise in pain.

The stew consists of soft tofu, so delicate that it falls apart when you grasp it. Koreans prefer to use a very long spoon for their stews, plus chopsticks. The stews almost always come with a metal bowl filled with sticky rice. This is almost always preceded by the usual assortment of Korean appetizers, the most notable being kimchee, which is fermented cabbage.

I had had sundubu in a variety of places, including Seattle, on the "Ave". They don't serve it at Sam Woo in Rockville, though I've ordered it there, and it is a pale imitation of really good sundubu. I've had it Yijo, which is a Korean restaurant in a Day's Inn very close to where I live. However, I decided to give Myongdong a try.

While this Korean restaurant has been nearby to where I live for a few years, I had never known it was around. Apparently, in its old location, there was a problem with parking. It was very close to the road. Then, they tore the small shopping complex down, and Myongdong went away for a year. Then, a new complex was built nearby, with the shops further recessed back from the road, near a CVS, so that there was reasonable parking, and Myongdong opened its doors again after a hiatus.

The place is brightly lit, from flourescent lights. Like many Korean places, the restaurant opens late--til 11 PM (other places open well past midnight).

I have to say, in this area, it's the best sundubu I've had. That's due, I suspect, to the assortment of seafood in it, from squid, to clams, to a mussel, each lending its flavor to the reddish gochujang beef broth at its centerpiece. When presented, it was boiling furiously in a metal pot.

Much like Indian restaurants, Koreans favor metal as serving instruments, from metal bowls for their stews, to thin metal bowls of rice.

Myongdong appears to have a wide assortment of other stews, so I'm eager to give them a try sometime in the future.

For some reason, they were playing music of the 80s and 70s. I was listening to some Phil Collins tune that was popular in the 80s, and it made me reminisce about college. It's a weird thought to have, at a restaurant I had never been to, eating among the best sundubu I've ever had.